This post is part of our Women & Philosophy Spotlight Series, which ran through March 2022. Spotlights in this series focus on women philosophers in the database.
Authored by: Angela Wachowich
Edited by: Michelle Levy
Submitted by: 03/26/2022
Citation: Wachowich, Angela. "Women & Philosophy Spotlight Series Conclusion." The Women's Print History Project, 1 April 2022, https://womensprinthistoryproject.com/blog/post/103.
Henry Robert Morland. Woman Reading by a Paper-Bell Shade. 1766, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1989.32.
This Women’s History Month, The Women’s Print History Project featured a Women & Philosophy Spotlight Series, which highlighted five of the exciting women who contributed to philosophical discourse during the long eighteenth century. However, as Kate and Kandice discussed with Lisa Shapiro in this month’s episode of The WPHP Monthly Mercury, we have barely scratched the surface of women’s philosophical writing! As a bibliographical database limited to print published during the long eighteenth century in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the United States, the WPHP cannot capture the full historical and international scope of female thinkers. For this reason, we’d like to conclude this month’s Spotlight Series by gesturing to some of the women we did not have the opportunity to cover, and other resources that might be of interest to those seeking to learn more about neglected female thinkers of the past.
Lisa Shapiro’s New Narratives Bibliography of Works by Women Philosophers of the Past collects works by women and other neglected thinkers from the medieval period through the early twentieth century. In addition to featuring familiar women like Margaret Cavendish and Mary Wollstonecraft, the Bibliography would be an excellent place to learn more about their international predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, such as Sor Juana de la Cruz, Emilie du Châtelet, and Frances Power Cobbe.
If you’re interested in learning more about the “querelle des femmes,” a polemic debate about the nature of women and women’s rights that stretched from the fifteenth- to the end of the eighteenth-century in Europe, check out Querelle. Querelle is a website that makes early texts in feminist philosophy available to researchers interested in the arguments and sources used by these progressive thinkers.
To discover marginalized individuals excluded from the philosophical canon more broadly, check out Project Vox. Project Vox connects students and teachers to the materials they need to explore the philosophical ideas of non-white and female voices, such as Tullia d’Aragona, Anna Maria van Schurman, and Lady Damaris Cudworth Masham.
Some other related projects that might be of interest are the Center History of Women Philosophers and Scientists, the Archeology of the Female Intellectual Identity, Feminist History of Philosophy, and the public Google Spreadsheet “Bibliography of Philosophical Works by Women of the Early Modern Period (~1550-1830).”
For more eighteenth century female philosophers like the women features in our Spotlight Series—Sophia, Margaret Cavendish, Harriet Martineau, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and Ann Williams—check out the table below:
| Name | Bio | Work(s) of philosophical interest |
| Mary Astell | English writer, philosopher, and rhetorician. Sometimes called "the first English feminist." |
A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest (1694); A Serious Proposal, Part II (1697); Some Reflections Upon Marriage (1700) |
| Mary Chudleigh (1656–1710) | English poet and essayist. | The Female Advocate (1700); The Ladies Defence (1701) |
| Mary Hays (1759–1843) | English writer. | Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796); Appeal to the men of Great Britain in behalf of women (1798) |
| Marie Huber (1695–1753) | French writer on theology, translator, and editor. | The world unmask’d: or, the philosopher the greatest cheat (1786) |
| Charlotte McCarthy (1720–1768) | Irish writer. | Justice and reason, faithful guides to truth (1767) |
| Hannah More (1745–1833) | English religious writer, philanthropist, poet, and playwright. | Strictures on the modern system of female education. With a view of the principles and conduct prevalent among women of rank and fortune (1799); Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1808). |
| Amelia Opie (1769–1853) | English novelist and poet. | Adeline Mowbray, or, The Mother and Daughter (1804) (based on the life of her friend Mary Wollstonecraft). |
| Elizabeth Thomas (1675–1731) | English poet. | Miscellany Poems on Several Subjects (1722). |
| Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1674–1749) | English novelist, dramatist, and philosopher. | A defence of the Essay of human understanding, written by Mr. Lock (1702); Remarks upon the principles and reasonings of Dr. Rutherforth’s Essay on the nature and obligations of virtue (1747); The Works of Mrs Catharine Cockburn, Theological, Moral, Dramatic, and Poetical (1751) |
As the WPHP continues to add American and French authors, printers, publishers, booksellers, editors, compilers, translators, engravers, illustrators, composers, and intellectuals to our database, we look forward to adding more names to this list. Thank you for tuning in!
Works Cited
Burr, Rosa Skytt, Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, and Anne-Sophie Sørup Wandall, editors. Archeology of the Female Intellectual Identity. https://comm.ku.dk/research/philosophy/afii/. Accessed 28 March 2022.
Deslauriers, Marguerite, Andrew Piper, and Laura Prelipcean, editors. Querelle. http://querelle.ca/about-2/. Accessed 28 March 2022.
“EMWPBibliography.” Google Sheets. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Jtb75rjUxJiYnHbYU1Jk1BH_pnlCYf5MQXmrZk-y7No/edit#gid=1518142132. Accessed 28 March 2022.
Halldenius, Lena, Martina Reuter, Karen O’Brien, Alan Coffee, and Sandrine Berges, editors. Feminist History of Philosophy. https://feministhistoryofphilosophy.wordpress.com. Accessed 28 March 2022.
Project Vox team. Project Vox. Duke University Libraries. https://projectvox.org. Accessed 28 March 2022.
The Center for History of Women Philosophers and Scientists. https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org. Accessed 28 March 2022.
Shapiro, Lisa, Principal Investigator. New Narratives Bibliography of Works by Women Philosophers of the Past. https://dhil.lib.sfu.ca/newn/. Accessed 28 March 2022.